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The Immigrant-Native Wage Gap in Germany Revisited

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The Immigrant-Native Wage Gap in Germany Revisited DISCUSSION PAPER SERIES IZA DP No. 12358 The Immigrant-Native Wage Gap in Germany Revisited Kai Ingwersen Stephan L. Thomsen MAY 2019 DISCUSSION PAPER SERIES IZA DP No. 12358 The Immigrant-Native Wage Gap in Germany Revisited Kai Ingwersen University of Hannover Stephan L. Thomsen University of Hannover, ZEW Mannheim and IZA MAY 2019 Any opinions expressed in this paper are those of the author(s) and not those of IZA. Research published in this series may include views on policy, but IZA takes no institutional policy positions. The IZA research network is committed to the IZA Guiding Principles of Research Integrity. The IZA Institute of Labor Economics is an independent economic research institute that conducts research in labor economics and offers evidence-based policy advice on labor market issues. Supported by the Deutsche Post Foundation, IZA runs the world’s largest network of economists, whose research aims to provide answers to the global labor market challenges of our time. Our key objective is to build bridges between academic research, policymakers and society. IZA Discussion Papers often represent preliminary work and are circulated to encourage discussion. Citation of such a paper should account for its provisional character. A revised version may be available directly from the author. ISSN: 2365-9793 IZA – Institute of Labor Economics Schaumburg-Lippe-Straße 5–9 Phone: +49-228-3894-0 53113 Bonn, Germany Email: [email protected] www.iza.org IZA DP No. 12358 MAY 2019 ABSTRACT The Immigrant-Native Wage Gap in Germany Revisited This study provides new evidence on the levels of economic integration experienced by foreigners and naturalised immigrants relative to native Germans from 1994 to 2015. We decompose the wage gap using the method for unconditional quantile regression models by employing a regression of the (recentered) influence function (RIF) of the gross hourly wage on a rich set of explanatory variables. This approach enables us to estimate contributions made across the whole wage distribution. To allow for a detailed characterization of labour market conditions, we consider a comprehensive set of socio-economic and labour-related aspects capturing influences of, e.g., human capital quality, cultural background, and the personalities of immigrants. The decomposition results clearly indicate a significant growing gap with higher wages for both foreigners (13.6 to 17.6 %) and naturalised immigrants (10.0 to 16.4 %). The findings further display a low explanation for the wage gap in low wage deciles that is even more pronounced within immigrant subgroups. Cultural and economic distances each have a significant influence on wages. A different appreciation of foreign educational qualifications, however, widens the wage gap substantially by 4.5 ppts on average. Moreover, we observe an indication of deterioration of immigrants’ human capital endowments over time relative to those of native Germans. JEL Classification: J61, J31, J15 Keywords: immigration, wage gap, unconditional quantile regression, Germany Corresponding author: Stephan Thomsen Institute for Economic Policy Leibniz Universität Hannover Königsworther Platz 1 30167 Hannover Germany E-mail: [email protected] 1 INTRODUCTION The continual globalization of societies fosters cultural diversity within national borders. In 2016, roughly 23.5 percent (19.5 million) of the German population had a so-called migration background, i.e., a personal migration experience or recent migration ancestry.1 With the recent inflow of migrants into Europe since 2014 (Eurostat, 2018b), opposing currents within the societies of European countries have become more visible. Germany as an immigration country cannot deprive from these contrary currents. As in many other countries of Europe and around the world, right-wing populist parties have recently achieved high rates of approval in elections. Sola (2018) finds a positive correlation between concerns about immigration and support for right-wing populist party “Alternative für Deutschland” (AfD) especially in eastern Germany. Critics of immigration in Germany are supported by the fact that the benefit system is demonstrably claimed by a growing number of foreigners (Riphahn et al., 2013). This public concern is fuelled by a perception of rising levels of income inequality (Roth et al., 2017). Although the development of inequality in terms of wages has stagnated in recent years (Biewen et al., 2017),2 research shows that especially low-skilled workers and immigrants are increasingly being negatively affected by wage inequality in Germany (e.g., Algan et al., 2010; Gernandt & Pfeiffer, 2007). Because the wage gap between immigrants and natives is a good indicator of economic integration and reflects the effectiveness of a country’s immigration and labour market policies, we study wage development trends for these groups in Germany in identifying a set of causes. Using the immigrant-native wage gap to analyse uneven remuneration is sensible because wages generally serve as an indicator of individuals’ levels of labour productivity. According to human capital theory, one’s productivity is determined by one’s abilities and skills, which are often expressed by one’s level of education (e.g., formal qualification) and work experience (Aldashev et al., 2012; Tverdostup & Paas, 2017) and therefore translated into earnings. Thus, a wage gap initially reflects a difference in productivity among workers and is not evident with discrimination against an individual or a particular group in the labour market (O’Neill & O’Neill, 2015). Regarding importance of inclusion, the labour market integration of immigrants is a major policy concern, as immigrants’ contributions to the economy depend directly on their success. Together with social and cultural aspects, income and wages are indispensable to holistic assimilation (e.g., Lehmer & Ludsteck, 2015, p. 677). In the first place, a welfare loss occurs due to insufficient job allocation. Immigrant employees may work in occupations below their qualifications and thus cannot exhaust their full production potential. In extreme cases, high wage differentials lead to larger unemployment assistance and social assistance payments in the medium run while social insurance contributions and tax revenues decrease. To identify triggers for counteracting social division, it is important to analyse whether wage differentials are due to observable differences in, for example, human capital endowments or due to unobservable influences 1 A person with a migration background is defined as someone who immigrated to Germany or who has at least one foreign, immigrant or naturalised parent (Federal Bureau of Statistics, 2017a). 2 Earnings discrepancies in Germany have reached average levels in Europe (Simón, 2010). The development of wage inequality from the 1990s to the early 2000s in Germany is addressed by Card, 2013; Dustmann et al., 2009; Gernandt & Pfeiffer, 2007. 2 comprising ethnic discrimination (Aldashev et al., 2012).3 A wage differential usually originates from limited access to the labour market (Aldashev et al., 2009; Brynin & Güveli, 2012). To improve the employment and labour market prospects of foreigners, the German government become increasingly dedicated to offering courses specially designed for immigrants on language instruction, social integration, integration through apprenticeship, work, and (university) education (Federal Government, 2016; Kosyakova & Sirries, 2017). Both the total number of courses and the demand for specific courses such as those on literacy and youth integration have increased over the last decade (BAMF, 2017). We decompose the immigrant-native wage gaps for males for the years 1994 to 2015 using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) as a source of information. SOEP data include a rich set of household and labour-related characteristics relevant to understanding the determinants of labour market success across groups. We consider a rich set of control variables that recognizes typically unobservable labour market influences. In particular, we examine individual personality traits and integration barriers by taking into account metrics of immigrants’ proximity to Germany based on their home countries’ levels of cultural distance (Kanas et al., 2012). We also consider foreign education degrees and employ the home country’s economic performance as an indicator of human capital quality (Coulombe et al., 2014). We estimate the immigrant-native wage gap by applying a variant of Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition to emphasize differences in returns. To consider heterogeneous effects observed along the whole wage distribution, we apply an approach proposed by Firpo et al. (2009) based on a recentered influence function (RIF) for unconditional quantile regression (UQR) models. This approach is mainly advantageous in its more precise decomposition, which allows one to estimate the contributions of each variable to composition effects observed along the entire wage distribution (Galego & Pereira, 2014). The variety of origins (and migration motives) involved makes it extremely difficult to depict the foreign qualifications of persons due to the presence of different education systems and requirements. Our study design is constructed to take this diversity explicitly into consideration. We differentiate between three main population groups in our analysis: Native Germans, Naturalised Immigrants, and Foreigners. We further consider (i) citizens of Turkey,
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